Adara's Music Box

 I was visiting a friend in England who had moved into a fully restored Victorian Manor House.

I was completed enthralled with it all, it was so lovely.  It was all polished wood floors and claw-foot tables and huge windows with brocade draperies, and there was a fireplace in every room. I loved every square inch of it, but my favorite room was the drawing-room. It had polished wooden bookshelves lined with whatever the well-read Victorian was reading,  old volumes of Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, and of course the Lake Poets. A highly polished Grand Piano graced one corner of the room and there were cozy period chairs facing the fireplace.  There were also two small sofas, well I called them sofas.  I was later informed that they were called setees. 

   I spent many of my evenings in the drawing- room. I’d sit by the warm, cozy fire and read from much-loved old volumes of Wordsworth and Elizabeth Barret Browning. I loved the feel of these old volumes and would lose myself for hours in them.  Some nights I would sit at the piano and play  Victorian love songs on the old piano. It was just such a night that I saw him looking out one of the tall windows near the bookcase. As I entered the room, I froze for a moment. Cindy didn’t mention that anyone else was staying with her, and she certainly didn’t mention anyone so attractive. 

   “Hello?”  I ventured a little further into the room. “I don’t believe we’ve met. I’m Tessa.”

I waited for a response from him, but he looked tenderly at me for a long moment and nodded, then vanished into thin air. A growing excitement gripped me. Cindy’s stately old Victorian Manor House was haunted, well, the drawing-room at least. I wondered if she knew.

  I found the fact that her drawing-room was haunted rather exciting. I was looking forward to getting to know the resident ghost on a much more personal basis. I started spending all of my evenings in that drawing-room in the hope of seeing him again.  The next time I saw him, he startled me to where I almost dropped the William Wordsworth volume I was reading. 

   “I would love to hear you read it aloud, Wordsworth is, well, was one of my favorites.”

He was sitting right next to me on the Setee by the fireplace and said it so matter-of-factly that I nearly jumped out of my skin.

    “I must apologize”, he said in his flawless English accent. It was not my intention to startle you. I didn’t know anyone could hear me until now.”

“So you’ve tried talking to people before?”  I asked resting my hand on his arm. It seemed like a natural thing for me to do.  I didn’t think twice about it.

     “You can touch me. I can feel your hand on my arm.” He was staring down at my hand resting lightly on his arm. “You’re the one I’ve been waiting for, with you I’m corporeal. You have to help me find something, something I lost when I lived here. I can search the rest of the house as long as you are with me.”

“I would love to help you, but I am a guest here, there are places I don’t have access to because it’s not my house.”  I countered.

   “We will start with the rooms you do have access to, starting with this room.”

“What are we looking for, exactly?”   I asked, almost afraid of the answer.

   “A small music box. The melody will bring my love back to me.”  He sighed. “I had almost given up all hope of ever finding it, then you showed up.  You are the only only one who has been able to see me or speak to me in over a century.”

“When did you die?” I asked.

   “I died in 1875 when a fever spread like a wildfire through this part of the country.”

“I’m sorry you died so young.”  I gave his arm a little squeeze. “You lived here, in this manor house?”

  “Yes, this was my wife’s favorite room, and she loved that old piano.  She played as beautifully as you do.”  He gave a little bow. 

“I love playing the old love songs, I get lost sometimes in the music,”  I replied.

   “Many others have played those same songs over the last century, but none have stirred my heart until you.” I didn’t know what to say to that so I turned our attention back to the music box.

“What’s so special about this music box?”  I ventured.

   “It played my wife’s favorite love song, the one she loved to play on the piano.  I had the music box made especially for her.

“What song did it play?”  I asked, curious as to her favorite love song.

   “The same one you have been playing so beautifully.” He swept an arm toward the piano.

“My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose.”  I started humming the tune.

   “I gave it to her as a wedding gift as we pledged our undying love for all eternity. When I find it and play the melody, it will bring her back to me.”   His eyes welled up with over a century of unshed tears.

“If it’s in this house, we’ll find it,”  I said adamantly.

   “This room is the last place that I saw it, it could be anywhere by now.”  He sounded so forlorn that it tugged at my heartstrings.

“Well, let’s start looking.”  I immediately started looking under all of the furniture, I even looked inside the piano.

  “How could you play so beautifully if there was something hidden in the piano?  He had a quizzical look on his face.

“The maker of this particular piano was a romantic at heart. I read all about before coming here, there are places built into it to hide little secret tokens of love, but there doesn’t appear to be anything in here now.”

   “It was worth a look”, I said as I headed over to the bookcase and started taking books off the shelves.

“Why are you doing that? How could it be in the bookcase?”  He looked adorably bewildered.

   “Bookcases in old Victorian manors are often more than they seem,”  I replied while I continued to fumble with the books.  “Ah, success.”  I pulled on a particularly unique volume of Shakespeare’s Sonnets and a whole other drawing-room was revealed. “Cliche, I know, but there it is.”  I allowed myself a small giggle.

   He insisted on stepping through first, it was such a gallant gesture.  There, on the mantle over the fireplace, which now mysteriously had a cheery fire burning in it, sat the little silver music box. I ran over to it and picked it up.   Etched in the silver top was an inscription that read: To my beautiful Adara, with love eternal, Gregory.  

“Open it.” He said as I looked up from the music box. He waited with excited anticipation as I opened the pretty little music box.  It started playing, ‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’

    “You’re Gregory.”  It was a statement of fact.  As I held the little music box with one hand, he reached out to me for the other, with my hand in his, and the music box playing our song, the connection was complete.

      This drawing-room much resembled the one we just left, it was in the very same Victorian manor house in which Gregory and Adara Bennet resided. I’m not sure how it all transpired but an invitation to visit a friend in England and a little silver music box brought us home, home to Victorian England and a new start.  I sat down at my Steinway Grand piano and played the same melody as my silver music box. Gregory came and stood behind me resting his hands lovingly on my shoulders as I played.  He bent down and kissed my right shoulder, now bared by my beautiful Victorian gown.  He whispered sweetly in my ear, “Welcome home, my love.”